You don’t need a dentist to tell you that dental hygiene’s important, but you do need one to keep your teeth as clean as can be.
At the office of Dr. Suzanne Caudry, we offer a range of specialized treatments to help our patients attain optimal oral health. If you’ve been looking to get rid of bad breath and improve your smile, here are five ways that a periodontist, like ourselves, can help:
1. Deep Scaling
What Is Deep Scaling?
Deep scaling (also known as conventional periodontal therapy) is a procedure used to remove plaque, bacteria, and calculus from a patient’s teeth. These unsavory guests can lead to gum disease and inflammation, so it’s important to keep them in check.
How Does It Work?
Deep scaling requires a specialized tool called a periodontal scaler or curette: a skinny device that narrows to a sharp point. Nowadays, many periodontists use an electronic scaler to speed up the procedure.
Regardless of which device is used, the idea behind the deep scaling remains the same: The clinician uses the curette to whittle away at plaque buildup, cleaning the teeth and killing bacteria in the process. The teeth, now exposed, can then be smoothed to remove additional contaminants and improve periodontal health.
How Often to Go in for a Deep Scaling?
If you’re prone to plaque and bacteria buildup, three months is a good benchmark. That’s about how long it takes bacteria to repopulate, and it gives your teeth and gums plenty of time to recover. Our regulatory body, the Canadian Academy for Periodontology, recommends that you go in every three months for deep scaling (as necessary), and that’s what we tend to stick to with our patients.
2. Antibacterial Treatments
What’s an Antibacterial Treatment?
Antibacterial treatments encompass a broad range of procedures to control the growth of bad bacteria. Generally, they’re best suited to people with gum disease, flappy gums, or tight pockets where bacteria can multiply.
How Does It Work?
At our practice, we use procedures that deliver antibacterial solutions to areas deep under the gum line, helping kill off even the most hard-to-reach bacteria colonies. Think of them like a frontline assault, striking square at the heart of those deep, recessed pockets of bacteria that won’t go away with brushing and flossing.
Antibacterial treatments offer numerous benefits, including:
- Better breath
- Pain relief
- Reduced bleeding from gums
- Prevent teeth loosening
- Stop or reverse periodontal disease
3. Fluoride
What Is Fluoride?
Fluoride is a naturally occurring mineral found in foods, water, and the atmosphere. It’s also one of the most important items in the dental toolkit.
Why Is Fluoride So Important?
Fluoride strengthens your teeth. When consumed, it fuses with your tooth to re-grow lost enamel, combat tooth decay, and prevent plaque buildup. It provides long-term relief from some of those most common dental problems—and it helps improve the health of your tooth roots too.
Many cities (Toronto included) fluoridate their water so that people get at least some fluoride in their system. Usually, this isn’t enough, however, and you should always ask your dentist whether your teeth need more.
Fluoride treatments come in many varieties. At our practice, we offer custom fluoride applications based on the patient’s needs and dentition. We find that tailoring our approach provides better outcomes and affords our patients a more pleasant experience.
4. Professional Polishing
What Is Professional Polishing?
A tooth polish procedure uses a polishing paste, which is applied to the patient’s teeth to minimize damage and remove unsightly stains.
Your periodontist may recommend a polishing after you’ve gone in for a deep scaling. It’s a bit like sanding something down: You start with a bigger grit, and you work your way down until you obtain a fine polish. Deep scaling does the heavy lifting, smoothing out your teeth and removing the big bunches of plaque. Polishing then adds the finishing touch, refining your teeth so that they’re clean, shiny, and smooth. It enhances the results: a nice way to cap off your trip to the dentist.
How Does It Work?
The polishing paste works as an extra-powerful abrasive, scrubbing away stains, discoloration, and any residual plaque. Since the polishing process can also roughen enamel, your clinician will most likely follow it up with fluoride application, ensuring your teeth can heal and remain strong and resilient.
5. Teeth Whitening
What Is Teeth Whitening?
Many Canadians want a whiter smile so that they can feel more confident about themselves. Teeth whitening helps meet that demand, and it can limit the effects of aging, smoking, and more.
Teeth whitening treatments vary on the client and clinician. At our practice, we use a custom, state-of-the-art whitening system that lets us offer both targeted whitening (for a particular tooth) and general whitening (for your entire mouth).
Tooth whitening can be either vital (for teeth with live nerve endings) or non-vital, for teeth with no live nerves, such as a root canal.
Why Choose a Teeth Whitening Treatment?
Teeth whitening can:
- Make you look younger
- Improve your self-confidence
- Reverse stains and tooth darkening
- Provide a brighter smile
If you’re curious about teeth whitening, don’t hesitate to reach out to learn more.
Looking to Get the Perfect Smile? Dr. Caudry’s Here to Help
At Dr. Suzanne Caudry’s, we make patient education a core focus of our practice. We know that staying informed is the best defense against poor dental hygiene, and we want to give you everything you need to fight tooth decay and come out the winner. We want to help you make informed decisions about your dental care and get you one step closer to attaining the perfect smile.
If you’re in the Greater Toronto Area, feel free to get in touch with us to learn more about our dental hygiene services. We’ll be happy to offer you a personal consultation where we can discuss your options and explain what we can do to help. Contact us at (416) 928-3444 or leave a comment below.